Many of today's adolescents are constantly engaging with information through texting, watching videos, listening to music, and even writing papers. Learning to interact properly with information through writing presents a challenge for the students because they are employing all of these applications at once and believe that they are multitasking…

Most studies on narrative competence have focused on monolingual subjects, and there are very few studies which address this issue in bilingual subjects dealing with two language systems. In the present case study we analyzed and compared the textual and narrative written skills of three deaf and three hearing adolescents attending eighth grade at…

Rubrics have become popular tools for assessing student writing both in classroom and standardized testing environments. Rubric construction and efficacy, however, is a topic that has been largely sidestepped in the literature and in teacher professional development. Composing an effective rubric--particularly for instructional or formative…

Educational reform initiatives of the last decade have focused on the three R's: reading, writing, and arithmetic, with writing receiving the least attention in the research literature (National Commission on Writing, 2003). Studies of writing performance in United States schoolchildren indicate that many are writing only at basic levels. The…

This article describes a writing activity that is employed after graded exams are handed back to students. Students are asked to reflect on their performance and to demonstrate understanding of mathematics related to the exam and/or unit of instruction. The article provides examples of student writing, scoring rubrics, and suggestions for…